Nicklaus and Woods hail McIlroy’s Open victory

Rory McIlroy poses with the Claret Jug after winning the 143rd Open Championship at The Royal Liverpool Golf Club on Sunday.

By Tony Jimenez, Reuters

Posted July 21, 2014, at 9:11 p.m.

HOYLAKE, England — Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods have combined to salute Rory McIlroy’s performance in capturing the British Open title for the first time in his career.

The 25-year-old Northern Irishman became the third youngest golfer in the modern era, after the two American greats, to land three of the four major championships when he triumphed by two strokes at Royal Liverpool on Sunday.

“I like his swagger,” said Nicklaus on his official Facebook page. “I like the way he handles himself.

“I like his desire to be great. I like his desire to do the things he needs to do. I like that in a young guy. He’s cocky in a nice way.”

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McIlroy went into the last day holding a six-stroke lead and Nicklaus said he was particularly impressed with the way he protected his advantage with a safety-first 71 in the final round.

“He didn’t take some of the chances that he did in the other rounds as far as the clubs he hit off the tee,” added the Golden Bear. “Rory didn’t put himself in position to lose the golf tournament. He did what he needed to do … It’s about shooting what you have to shoot to win the golf tournament.”

Woods, who finished 69th of the 72 players who made the cut at Royal Liverpool in only his second competitive appearance since undergoing back surgery in March, compared new world No. 2 McIlroy to his rival Phil Mickelson.

“The way Rory plays is pretty aggressively,” said Woods. “When he gets it going, he gets it going. When it gets going bad, it gets going real bad — it’s one or the other.

“He’s very similar to what Phil does. He has his hot weeks and he has his weeks where he’s off. And that’s just the nature of how he plays the game.

“He hasn’t really been making the amount of putts that he did a couple of years ago, but now he’s starting to make those 10- to 15-footers. That turns rounds around,” Woods added.

“You make two or three birdies in a row, you make a par putt here and there. Next thing you know a round where you would normally shoot one- or two-over and all of a sudden it’s a 69 and then you get the hot round and it’s a 66 or 65.”

Mickelson said it would be tough for McIlroy, who has only Australian Adam Scott ahead of him in the rankings, to dominate world golf the way Woods and Nicklaus once did.

“We used to say there will never be another Nicklaus and then along came Tiger,” said Mickelson. “You never want to discount the possibility of someone coming along and dominating but nobody has really asserted themselves week in and week out the way Tiger did for such a long period of time.

“We’ll have great performances, like Rory this week, like Martin Kaymer at last month’s U.S. Open … but it’s very hard to do that week in and week out the way Tiger did.”